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artist, marina-abramovic, plan-of-readings.

BIOGRAPHY

Marina Abramović was born in Belgrado, ex-Yugoslavia, 1946. Lives in New York 2007 WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles/ P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York 2006 Balkan Epic, Art for the World Project, Pirelli, Milan 2005 Seven Easy Pieces, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 2004 2004 Whitney Biennial 2002 The House with the Ocean View, Sean Kelly Gallery, New York 1997 47. Biennale di Venezia Selected Bibliography ABRAMOVIĆ, Marina; SPECTOR, N.; FISCHER-LICHTE, E. & UMATHUM, S., Marina Abramović: 7 Easy Pieces, Milan, Charta, 2007; ABRAMOVIĆ, Marina ; MCEVILLEY, Thomas & STOOS, Toni, Abramović, Artist Body, Kunstmuseum Bern; La Galleria, Valencia; Lonja del Pescado, Alicante; Moderna Galerija and Cankarev Dom, Ljubljana & Milan, Ed. Charta, 1998; FÜRSTENBERG, Adelina von (ed.), Marina Abramović: Balkan Epic, Milan, Skira Editore/Hangar Bicocca, 2006.

INTERVIEW

Lynne Cooke: How did this piece come about?

Marina Abramović: In thinking a lot about how to refresh my old material, and how to present it in different ways, I discovered I had many works dealing with my head. After editing them, I came out with a modern version of the Portrait Gallery – except that whereas, traditionally, a portrait gallery is a collection of paintings, this one is electronic. The first time I used video was after I left Yugoslavia in Artist Must Be Beautiful (1975), which focuses on my head. From then on, somehow I was always busy with different parts of the body: stomach, arms or legs…. When I started editing these works I found they gave a version of my life: not only of how my performances developed, but also of the artist ageing over thirty years. I have two works in progress: the Video Portrait Gallery and The Biography, which I started in 1987 after walking along the Great Wall of China with Ulay, and continue editing every four or five years, as different things happen in my life.

Lynne Cooke: For those of us who are very familiar with your work, each monitor in the Video Portrait Gallery will serve, in part, as an aide-mémoire recalling the original performance excerpted here.

Marina Abramović: Every time I look at works from the ’70s and ’80s in exhibitions today, they always look so sad. It’s unfair that new technology looks so much better, fresher and beautiful: the old works somehow still lose even when the ideas are ten times better. My big question is: Does an artist have the right to refresh material from his / her past by putting it in a context where it may live another life?

Lynne Cooke: You’ve included footage from Cleaning the Mirror (1) (1995) in which you wash a skeleton’s bones. Tellingly, the part you excerpted shows the head of the skeleton, not your own head. This skull speaks to the future, the afterlife…

Marina Abramović: Exactly. I sent my measurements to a specialist medical school in Germany where they make skeletons. Even if these are not real bones this is, metaphorically, my body.

Lynne Cooke: Lately, you seem to be thinking a lot about death.

Marina Abramović: It’s been exactly one year since my mother and my aunt died; also some friends. Although it’s very important to me, I don’t think about death itself, only about the horrible funeral. Because I think you have to make a gesture about how you want to be seen, I want to have that part under control. The Sophists would say that life is a dream and death is waking up, but the passage between is very important. As an artist, you have to know not only how to live but when to stop work, and how to die. Sometimes, you panic about not being productive. Maybe there’s a time in life when you’re not supposed to do anything.

Lynne Cooke: Although most professionals, like judges and scientists, retire at a given age, the ideal model of the artist we uphold as a culture is of someone who, late in life, experiences a great creative outburst – like Beethoven, or Monet. There’s little dignity accorded to an artist who chooses simply to retire at sixty-five.

Marina Abramović: It’s such a contradiction. Whatever your personal circumstances, your work has to be able to elevate the spirit.

Lynne Cooke: Today the image of the artist as a celebrity is ubiquitous. In making this extended self-portrait, are you deliberately playing with, or into, this?

Marina Abramović: My generation didn’t think about that kind of stuff: the idea of the artist as an icon comes from the ’80s. Although I’ve never been into this before, it’s basic to the whole idea of the Video Portrait Gallery, and to how it will continue.


Lynne Cooke is the curator of the Dia Art Foundation since 1991. She was recently appointed chief-curator of the Reina Sofia in Madrid.

PROJECTS - 28TH SAO PAULO BIENAL

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